Playing With Matches
by soaring-smiles
Summary: But the way she's breathing, flushed, pupils slightly dilated, it sends his reason scurrying and logic hiding. The Doctor's control is fraying when it comes to Rose Tyler. Watch him break.


**Those who are offended or uncomfortable with sexual scenes might want to avoid the section **_flame._ **If not, hey, have fun with the bits in italics ;)**

* * *

_Touch your lips just so I know_

_In your eyes love, it glows so_

_I'm bare boned and crazy for you_

_Crash Into Me- Dave Matthews Band_

_fire:/noun/:the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame, and heat_

* * *

_ember_

A shopgirl. A teenager. Young, naive, illogical.

That is precisely what he tells himself, because he's like a guardian. A guardian, maybe a friend.

Certainly not anything else.

Wouldn't _want_ to be anyway. Pretty, he supposes, but young and inexperienced and-

She steps out from the shadows, and his thoughts whirl around frantically, trying to find some semblance of normality.

It's the dress.

The words come spilling out of his mouth, and it has to be the dress.

It has to be the dim light of the TARDIS that lights up her features, the way her smile spreads across her face, and a wisp of hair trails down her cheek.

He's stumbling now, covers up his mistake in a backhanded insult. Her grin lessens, and he wishes he could take it back, but his hands are hot, and his eyes follow her figure as she bounds down the ramp. To his eternal shame, his stomach twinges when her bodice slips a bit lower.

She turns; catching him staring, and he can see a faint blush. It makes her all the more appealing, and he's starting after her before he knows what his legs are doing.

She has the first footstep and sinks into the snow, his hand rests lightly on her back while his gaze traces her lips. The wonder lends a momentarily stunning light to her.

It has to be the dress.

* * *

_spark_

Her laugh rings out through the TARDIS, and he grins, swinging their hands through the air.

He relishes this friendship, the light teasing they have, the way her eyes light up.

"Whatever," she continues, "Screw Henry the Eighth, give me an alien any day!"

She grins, and he stops.

He's not pretty. He knows that. His forehead has furrows, his nose is too strong, and his ears don't bear thinking about.

He's nine hundred(give or take a couple of centuries), but more important to Rose, he would think, is the fact he looks like he's in his forties.

But the way she's breathing, flushed, pupils slightly dilated, it sends his reason scurrying, and logic hiding.

"Yeah?" he says, a bit more huskily than he expects. He watches her swallow, sees the honesty in her eyes, and reclines against the console, a tad smug.

She thinks he's handsome, he can tell. And if not that, she's-

She's _attracted_.

"Yeah," she replies, and he's willing to bet his heartbeats have never gone so erratically in all of his lives.

She smiles at him, and he's struck by the flash of..._something_...in the tilt of her head, the way she angles her hips.

He's the one who swallows now.

"I think you're gorgeous," she says bluntly. His side melts into hers, the thudding of their hearts indistinguishable from each other.

She puts her lips to his ear.

"_Considerin_'," she breathes, and then swirls away, mumbling something about a shower.

And he's left frozen in the same position, a sense of slight awe replacing her.

_Touché_.

His hands are trembling, he notes distractedly, as he digs out his sonic screwdriver, and adjusts the circuits.

It's only when she reenters he notices he's been melting the wires for the past half an hour.

* * *

_flame_

She's wearing that perfume that he bought her on a market three thousand light years away.

He didn't realize it was a potent aphrodisiac, honest.

And even his superior biology can't ignore the various tantalizing scents, and when she's pressed up against him like this, it's hard to control.

She leans closer, her hair brushes his cheek, and he bites back a growl, resisting the urge to-

_wrap his arms around her, hear that little mew of surprise, hear it turn to pleasure when he slips a hand in her jeans and-_

Stop.

His forehead furrows, and he sighs. It's a much more weak sound than he had been aiming for.

He slides away from her, every inch making it easier to think. Eventually, about as far as the walls of the cell can allow, he relaxes and slides to the floor.

She watches him in concern, a corner of her-

_red, full, swollen with his violent kisses, his all his, only his, she is his-_

mouth quirked up. He turns away.

She scoots closer-

_pushing her against a wall, pressing down on her and thrusting against her, moving in tandem as she whimpers against his neck, soft needy-_

-and childishly, he backs himself into the corner.

But her fingers interlock with his, and the smell of roses and rain is nearly overpowering.

_hands skim her legs, trace a pattern on the inside of her thigh. She moans and jerks up her hips, and his fingers are in her slick heat, and she's beyond rational thought, and he's made her like this, made her-_

He draws in a breath, and she faces him.

A question is written on her face, one that he doesn't answer.

Slowly, he raises a hand to her neck, and brushes back her hair. He can feel her heart speed up. It makes him shiver.

_head tilted, back arched, lips parted, a cry resounding between them, wild, out of control as she comes hard, keening, and he spasms and pounds into her one last time, spilling inside her, his his his-_

Very softly, tentatively, he draws the back of his hand along her cheekbone. Her eyes widen, search his for an explanation. He doesn't move, except to shift his other hand to her waist.

_on her knees, taking him into her mouth, tongue on his head, swirling, and he swears and pushes deeper, lost in sensation, rocking, spiralling higher and higher, her lips velvet and ready and pushing and oh-_

She leans in, and his mouth is about to meet hers, when the door bursts open, and he scrambles away, frantically.

The perfume fades but the images don't.

* * *

_fire_

She wanted a nightclub, and Jack backed her up. Now he's miserably watching the two of them shimmy on the dance floor, while he downs a hypervodka. He wonders how many of them it'll take for him to get well and truly smashed, and finds he doesn't care.

Her spangled shirt rides up, and his eyes immediately relocate.

Jack chose her outfit tonight, under his glare. The short skirt is attracting other glances, and he grimaces into the alcohol, hands clenching.

Other men have their eyes on her, and it makes a strange, violent feeling creep up his chest, settle in over his mind.

He wants to drag her back home, and go somewhere uninhabited, without pretty boys.

She sways over to him, and he makes eye contact with the boy across the room, warning and _mine_ in one. The blond coughs uncomfortably, and it's with a sense of pride that he watches the git turn around.

"You dancin'?" Rose asks, and holds out a hand.

Some part of him names this as a Bad Idea, but the others are smug that it's him she wants. And there is always the fraction focussing on exactly how she would feel moulded to him, the angle at which she would throw back her neck as his fingers trailed a heated path down her body...

As always, it's the jealousy that wins, and he takes her hand, and she pulls him upright. A slow, sultry beat cuts through the mass of bodies, and his hands rest on her waist, lightly.

She's drunk.

He's not too sober himself.

Vaguely, he notices Jack shooting a thumbs up, but his attention is on Rose.

She burns against his fingertips, heating his whole body, until he's reduced to a human, reduced to base urges he knows he's better than.

He wants-

Rassilon, he _wants_ her.

She twines around him, and his hands shift lower, under her shirt, rubbing circles on her back.

Rose takes in a breath sharply.

Her arms reach around his neck, until there's nothing, no space to distract him from the fact she's setting him alight.

They've abandoned all pretense of dancing now, just standing in the mess of people, unnoticeable.

He loves the effect he has on her, loves that her heart picks up when he's close, loves the way her eyes drop to his mouth.

And he loves that now she's drawing his head down, and they're kissing, in a 34th century nightclub, in the heart of New Tokyo.

He loves-

_Her_.

* * *

_inferno_

It's like an explosion, he thinks idly.

He tastes summer, and light, fire and smoke.

Words flash into his mind-

_bad wolf_

-but they vanish just as quickly, forgotten.

Someone whistles, shouts out derogatory things in some mutant form of Japanese. He backs her into the bar, ignoring the smooth American tones that mutter something about 'finally'.

She deepens the kiss, or maybe he does; it's difficult to tell when blood is pounding in his ears.

All the thoughts in his mind are in a dusty old language, lost in time. He runs through a variety of words, trying to find one that describes her, or the feeling that courses through them both.

He _can't_.

He presses her into the counter, in an attempt to get as close as possible. It's heated, this. Her leg hooks around his, like a vine. She arches up against him, swallows his groan.

Another moment, and his hands are sliding up her side, brushing strange patterns against her skin. Her heart stutters out a matching beat. He tugs at her lower lip, then trails his mouth down her neck, tasting her pulse, feeling it flutter madly.

She pulls back, panting, flushed.

Her eyes are shut, and she stumbles a bit. He helps steady her, and she looks at him, brown eyes into blue.

"Are you drunk?" Neither she nor her voice are steady.

"Yeah."

"You gonna pretend this never happened?"

Pressing a kiss on her collarbone, he replies, "No."

"Good."

She looks up at him. He leans against her, and Jack grins.

He silences whatever innuendo was coming with an exasperated glare.

"Jeez. Calm down," Jack mutters, and swivels to charm a muscular man, who's stoned out of his mind.

He touches her shoulder, absurdly chaste. He's caught between holding back and possessive, gentleman and savage.

"We could..." he leaves the sentence hanging, vulnerable.

He needs her, so much, but if she doesn't want him, he could never force her.

She nods, slowly, a nervous smile blooming.

"Yeah."

"Fantastic," he growls, low and rough, and catches her mouth again.

The trip to the TARDIS is messy, tangled together as they are. It takes incredible self-control to stop kissing her for more than about twenty seconds, and she's not too good at keeping her hands off of him too.

They stumble on the bumps on the grating, and she's already unzipping his jacket when alarm bells ring in the distance.

A yell echoes, something about illegal couplings.

"Jack," they state simultaneously.

They stare at each other, and it seems an age before he speaks.

"Jack can solve his own problems tonight, I think," he decides.

The blue door shuts with a bang.


End file.
